Lapeirousia spinoza biography

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Spinoza died in relative peace in and was buried at the Hague. His teachings on the divine, on the psychological basis of prophecy, and on the limits of religious authority clearly challenged the claims of orthodoxy. Spinoza defended the philosophic life against religious persecution and argued for a new, liberal, democratic regime supportive of that life.

For a person, an event that leads to happiness is good, and an event that leads to suffering is bad. The goal of every person is to intellectually love God that is, understand Nature as much as humanly possible. Contents move to sidebar hide. Page Talk. Read Change Change source View history. Tools Tools. This work was unfortunately interrupted by Spinoza's death on February 21, Another late work that remained incomplete was his Latin Compendium of Hebrew Grammarwhich he "undertook at the request of certain of his friends who were diligently studying the Sacred Tongue" Bloom,p.

Spinoza's excommunication left a psychological scar that explains, partly at least, much of his subsequent bitterness toward his own people and their traditions. Although it is undoubtedly true that Spinoza's intended audience was a Christian one, and that this dictated his partiality toward the figure of Christ and the Apostles, the unnecessary slurs against the Pharisees and the Rabbis and the unmistakable hostility that sometimes surfaces in a number of his formulations point to the psychological effects, conscious or unconscious, of his expulsion from the Jewish community.

Spinoza characterizes his new method of investigating scripture as an empirical approach that accepts the biblical text as a natural datum. Since prophecy claims to surpass human understanding, Spinoza must somehow take it at its word. For the sake of the masses, who cannot be reached by reason alone, Spinoza is willing to grant that prophecy is possible.

There may be, he says, laws of imagination that are unknown to humans, and the prophets, who received their revelations from God by means of the imagination, could thus perceive much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect. Although Moses is the chief of the prophets, his eminence consisted only in his receiving his prophecies through a real voice rather than an imaginary one.

In other respects, however, Moses' imagination was not especially distinguished, for he was not sufficiently aware of God's omniscience, and he perceived the Decalogue not as a record of eternal truths but as the ordinances of a legislator. Spinoza set up the figure of Christ in contrast to Moses. If Moses spoke with God face-to-face, Christ communed with him mind-to-mind a probable allusion to the Johanine conception of Christ as the Logosas noted by Leavitt in Christian Philosophy of Spinoza [].

No one except Christ received the revelations of God without the aid of the imagination, meaning Christ possessed a mind far superior to those of his fellow men. Moreover, because Christ was sent to teach not only the Jews but the whole human race, it was not enough that his mind be attuned only to the Jews; it was attuned to ideas universal and true.

If he ever proclaimed any revelations as laws, he did so because of the ignorance of the people. To those who were allowed to understand the mysteries of heaven, he taught his doctrines as eternal truths. To Spinoza, the biblical doctrine of the chosenness of the Hebrews implies on their part a childish or malicious joy in their exclusive possession of the revelation of the Bible.

The doctrine is to be explained by the fact that Moses was constrained to appeal to the childish understanding of the people. In truth, he claims, the Hebrew nation was not chosen by God for its wisdom — it was not distinguished by intellect or virtue — but for its social organization. Spinoza explains the extraordinary fact of Jewish survival by the universal hatred that Jews drew upon themselves.

From JeremiahSpinoza deduces that the Jews were no longer bound to practice their ceremonial law after the destruction of their state. The Pharisees continued these practices more to oppose the Christians than to please God. Spinoza's view of the Pharisees is consistently derogatory. He attributes to them economic motives in their quarrel with the Sadducees and goes so far as to say that Pontius Pilate had made concession to the passion of the Pharisees in consenting to the crucifixion of Christ, whom he knew to be innocent.

Maimonides is pejoratively termed a Phariseeand Spinoza dismissed his interpretation of scripture as harmful, useless, and absurd. Moreover, on the basis of EzekielSpinoza finds the explanation of the frequent falling away of the Hebrews from the Law, which finally led to the destruction of their state, in the fact that God was so angry with them that he gave them laws whose object was not their safety but his vengeance.

To motivate the common individual to practice justice and charity, certain doctrines concerning God and humans, says Spinoza, are indispensable. These, too, are a product of the prophetic imagination, but they will necessarily be understood philosophically by those who can do so. This universal scriptural religion is distinguished both from philosophical religion, which is a product of reason and is independent of any historical narrative, and from the vulgar religion of the masses, which is a product of the superstitious imagination and is practiced through fear alone; it consists of seven dogmas.

The first four concern God and his attributes of existence, unity, omnipresence, and power and will. The other three deal with people's religious acts, and seem to derive from a Christian context: human beings' worship of God, their salvation, and their repentance. Each of the seven dogmas can be understood either imaginatively, in which case they would all be lapeirousia spinoza biography, though useful, or philosophically, in which case they would all be true.

Presumably, the average individual's score would be a mixed one. Spinoza begins and ends with God. He is convinced that upon reflective analysis individuals become immediately aware that they have an idea of substanceor that which is in itself and is conceived through itself. Because substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another, and because if two things have nothing in common, one cannot be the cause of the other, then it is evident that all the entities of which humans have experience, including themselves, must, because they all have extension in common, constitute one substance.

Although a human being is also characterized by thought, which has nothing in common with extension, since one is aware of one's own lapeirousia spinoza biography, these two attributes cannot denote two substances but must be instead two parallel manifestations of one and the same substance. Spinoza thus insists that humans have a clear and distinct idea of substance or God having at least two parallel attributes.

In Ethics 1. Although he elsewhere hints that there may be more than two attributes, he stops short of saying that there are. Even more controversial is the question whether the attributes are to be understood as subjective or objective. Although this conception of substance is ultimately derived from empirical observation, it is not dependent on any particular observation as such but follows from the analysis of ideas and is therefore a product of the power of the mind to think ideas and analyze their logical structure.

It is in this sense that knowledge of substance, or God, is a priorideriving essentially from an analysis of a given true definition contained within the human mind. Spinoza designates knowledges of this kind as intuitive; he ranks it as the highest form of knowledge humans have, above deductive reasoning, which is mediated by the syllogistic process, and imagination, which is based either on hearsay or random experience.

For Spinoza, the only adequate or clear and distinct ideas humans possess are those related to God, simple ideas, and common notions, or axioms, and what is deduced from them. Knowledge derived from syllogistic reasoning which yields universal knowledge and intuitive knowledge which represents the power of the mind itself, on which syllogistic reasoning ultimately rests are necessarily true.

God is eternally in a state of self-modification, producing an infinite series of modes that are manifested under either of his attributes. Under the attribute of extension, there is the immediate infinite mode, motion and rest; and under thought, the absolutely infinite intellect, or the idea of God. Finally come the finite modes, or particular things.

Substance with its attributes is called natura naturansthe creative or active divine power, whereas the entire modal system, the system of what is created, is called natura naturata. Spinoza's God is thus not identical with the natural world as such but only with the creative ground that encom-passes it. While others consider human actions and appetites as virtues and vices to be bewailed or mocked, Spinoza considers them natural facts to be studied and understood.

Vice is impotence, whereas virtue is power. Individuals act when anything is done of which they are the adequate cause; they suffer when anything is done of which they are only the partial cause. The first law of nature as the Stoics had already noted is the impulse, or effort conatusby which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own being.

Humans do not desire anything because they think it good, but humans adjudge a thing good because they desire it. Desire is activity conducive to self-preservation; pleasure marks its increase, pain its decrease. Spinoza offers a pioneering psychological analysis of the ways through which the human imagination acts and discusses in some detail the various laws of what he calls the association and imitation of the lapeirousia spinoza biographies.

Spinoza calls active emotions those which are related to the mind insofar as it acts and of which an individual is the adequate cause. Of these there are only two: desire, or the effort of self-preservation in accordance with the dictates of reason, and pleasure, or the enjoyment experienced from the mind's contemplation of itself whenever it conceives an adequate or true idea.

In the conflict of emotions, weaker emotions are removed by stronger ones, as Plato had already indicated in the Timaeus. Knowledge of good and evil can be a determining factor only insofar as it is considered an emotion — that is, a consciousness of pleasure and pain. Inasmuch as happiness consists in humans' preservation of their own beings and they act virtuously when effecting their self-preservation in accordance with their full powers, humans must seek to maximize their power to act, which means removing their passive emotions to the greatest possible extent and substituting for them active emotions.

Spinoza suggests various remedies for the passive emotions, which he describes as mental diseases already described by the Stoics. Since a passive emotion is a confused idea, the first remedy is to remove confusion and transform it into a clear and distinct idea. Another remedy is to realize that nothing happens except through the necessity of an infinite causal series.

Humans should also endeavor to expel the many ghosts that haunt their minds by contemplating the common properties of things. Indeed, the emotions themselves may become an object of contemplation. The sovereign remedy, however, is the love of God. The mind has the capacity to cause all affections of the body to be related to the idea of God; that is, to know them by intuitive knowledge.

Spinoza endeavors to demonstrate the immortality of the human mind stripped of sensation, memory, and imagination but insists that even during a lifetime one can experience that state of immortality which he calls blessedness and describes as union with, or love for, God. The intellectual love of God, which arises from intuitive knowledge, is eternal and is part of the infinite love with which God loves himself.

Among the major philosophers, Spinoza was the only one who did not found a school. During the first hundred years after Spinoza's death, his name was connected principally with the Tractatus Theologico-Politicusand as Isreal has emphsized, "no one else rivalled his notoriety as chief challenger of revealed religion" Isreal,p. Only toward the end of the eighteenth century did Spinoza begin to arouse enthusiasm among men of letters.

Although a follower of Christian Wolff, who directed a formidable critique against Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn hailed Spinoza as early as as a martyr for the furthering of human knowledge. Goethe, on the other hand, eagerly devoured Spinoza's Ethicsnoting that it "agreed most with his own conception of nature," and that "he always carried it with him.

According to G. Hegel —there was "either Spinozism or no philosophy," and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling — wrote that "no one can hope to progress to the true and complete in philosophy without having at least once in his life sunk himself in the abyss of Spinozism" McFarland,p. Appreciation for Spinoza in England was due especially to Samuel Taylor Coleridgewho wrote in about that only two systems of philosophy were possible, that of Spinoza and that of Immanuel Kant — In a letter ofFriedrich Nietzsche — expressed his astonishment at the kinship between Spinoza's position on morality and his own, although elsewhere he is severely critical of Spinoza.

Martin Buber — found much inspiration in Spinoza, seeing in him the highest philosophical exemplification of Judaism's unique quest for unity, but he criticized the Spinozistic attempt to depersonalize God. In the s, Shemu'el David Luzzatto stirred up a literary polemic concerning Spinoza after having been aroused by the first laudatory biography of Spinoza in Hebrewwritten by the poet Me'ir Letteris; by the essays of Schelling's student Senior Sachs from toin which he links together Shelomoh Ibn Gabirol, Avraham ibn Ezra, the qabbalists, and Spinoza; and by Shelomoh Rubin's Moreh nevukhim he-hadashwhich contains a positive account of Spinoza's thought.

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Luzzatto attacked Spinoza's emphasis on the primacy of the intellect over the feelings of the heart and his denial of free will and final causes, and called unjustified his attack on the Pharisees and on the Mosaic authorship of all of the Pentateuch. Nahman Krochmal's son, Avraham, wrote an apologetic work, Eben ha-ro'shahin which he defended Spinoza, whom he reverently called Rabbenu Our Master Baruch an epithet already applied to Spinoza by Moses Hess — inand later also adopted by Einstein.

Shortly after arriving at Sedeh Boker on December 13,in order to settle at a kibbutz in the Negev, first prime minister of Israel, Ben Gurion, published an article in the newspaper Davar titled "Let Us Make Amends," in which he expressed the wish "to restore to our Hebrew language and culture, the writings of the most original and profound thinker that appeared amongst the Hebrew people in the last two thousand years.

What still needed mending was the literary cultural fact that Hebrew literature remains incomplete as long as it does not include the entire corpus of Spinoza's writings as one of the greatest spiritual assets of the Jewish nation. Ben Gurion's wish has now finally been fulfilled with the appearance of all of Spinoza's major works in Hebrew translation, and with the establishment of a Spinoza Institute in Jerusalem which holds biannual conferences devoted to Spinoza's thought.

This piece of historical irony by which Spinoza's philosophical legacy has now been emphatically included in the intel-lectual life of Israel would undoubtedly have afforded Spinoza a measure of supreme delight. See Dorman,pp. Spinoza has been regarded as the founder of scientific psychology, and his influence has been seen in the James — Lange theory of the emotions and in some of the central concepts of Freud see Bidney, Spinoza has also received an enormous amount of attention in the former Soviet Union.

Spinoza's concept of nature as self-caused, infinite, and eternal was first singled out for comment by Friedrich Engels in his Dialectics of Nature. From the Soviet viewpoint, Spinoza's materialism is unfortunately wrapped in a theological garb, but his consistent application of the scientific method is seen as overshadowing "the historically transient and class-bounded in his philosophy" see Kline,p.

In America, the transcendentalists of the eighteenth century held Spinoza in very high regard. Oliver Wendell Holmes — read and reread Spinoza's Ethicsand his famous formulation that freedom of thought reached a limit only when it posed a "clear and present danger" appears to have been made under Spinoza's influence. Moreover, Spinoza had special appeal for the young American Jewish intellectuals who were children of the first wave of immigrants from eastern Europe.

Heidelberg, ; a fifth volume was added in According to Nadler, this will be superseded by an edition from the Groupe de Recherches Spinozistes. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophySpinoza's God is an "infinite intellect" Ethics 2p11c — all-knowing 2p3and capable of loving both himself—and us, insofar as we are part of his perfection 5p35c.

And if the mark of a personal being is that it is one towards which we can entertain personal attitudes, then we should note too that Spinoza recommends amor intellectualis dei the intellectual love of God as the supreme good for man 5p However, the matter is complex. Spinoza's God does not have free will 1p32c1he does not have purposes or intentions 1 appendixand Spinoza insists that "neither intellect nor will pertain to the nature of God" 1p17s1.

Moreover, while we may love God, we need to remember that God is not a being who could ever love us back. Steven Nadler suggests that settling the question of Spinoza's atheism or pantheism depends on an analysis of attitudes. If pantheism is associated with religiosity, then Spinoza is not a pantheist, since Spinoza believes that the proper stance to take towards God is not one of reverence or religious awe, but instead one of objective study and reason, since taking the religious stance would leave one open to the possibility of error and superstition.

Many authors have discussed similarities between Spinoza's philosophy and Eastern philosophical traditions. A few decades after the philosopher's death, Pierre Baylein his famous Historical and Critical Dictionary pointed out a lapeirousia spinoza biography between Spinoza's alleged atheism with "the theology of a Chinese sect", supposedly called "Foe Kiao", [ ] of which he had learned thanks to the testimonies of the Jesuit missions in Eastern Asia.

A century later, Kant also established a parallel between the philosophy of Spinoza and the thinking of Laozi a "monstrous system" in his wordsgrouping both under the name of pantheists, criticizing what he described as mystical tendencies in them. InElijah Benamozegh purported to establish that the main source of Spinoza's ontology is Kabbalah.

Spinoza's ideas have had a major impact on intellectual debates from the seventeenth century to the current era. How Spinoza is viewed has gone from the atheistic author of treatises that undermine Judaism and organized religion, to a cultural hero, the first secular Jew. He is not a despairing nihilistbut rather Spinoza says that "blessedness is nothing else but the contentment of spirit, which arises from the intuitive knowledge of God.

Israelargues that "No leading figure of the post later Enlightenment, for example, or the nineteenth century, was engaged with the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, Bayle, Locke, or Leibniz, to the degree leading figures such as LessingGoethe, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Heine, George Eliotand Nietzsche, remained preoccupied throughout their creative lives with Spinoza.

His expulsion from the Portuguese synagogue in has stirred debate over the years on whether he is the "first modern Jew". Spinoza influenced discussions of the so-called Jewish questionthe examination of the idea of Judaism and the modern, secular Jew. In Santayana's autobiography, he characterized Spinoza as his "master and model" in understanding the naturalistic basis of morality.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein evoked Spinoza with the title suggested to him by G. Moore of the English translation of his first definitive philosophical work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicusan allusion to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Elsewhere, Wittgenstein deliberately borrowed the expression sub specie aeternitatis from Spinoza Notebooks, —16p.

The structure of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus does have some structural affinities with Spinoza's Ethics though, admittedly, not with the Spinoza's Tractatus in erecting complex philosophical arguments upon basic logical propositions and principles. In propositions 6. Spinoza's philosophy played an important lapeirousia spinoza biography in the development of post-war French philosophy.

Many of these philosophers "used Spinoza to erect a bulwark against the nominally irrationalist tendencies of phenomenology", which was associated with the dominance of HegelMartin Heideggerand Edmund Husserl in France at that time. Antonio Negriin exile in France for much of this period, also wrote a number of books on Spinoza, most notably The Savage Anomaly in his own reconfiguration of Italian Autonomia Operaia.

His own work was deeply influenced by Spinoza's philosophy, particularly the concepts of immanence and univocity. Marilena de Souza Chaui described Deleuze's Expressionism in Philosophy as a "revolutionary work for its discovery of expression as a central concept in Spinoza's lapeirousia spinoza biography. Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted the most influence on his world view Weltanschauung.

Spinoza equated God infinite substance with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity. InEinstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.

Leo Strauss dedicated his first book, Spinoza's Critique of Religionto an examination of his ideas. Strauss identified Spinoza as part of the tradition of Enlightenment rationalism that eventually produced Modernity. Moreover, he identifies Spinoza and his works as the beginning of Jewish Modernity. Spinoza is an important historical figure in the Netherlandswhere his portrait was featured prominently on the Dutch guilder banknotelegal tender until the euro was introduced in The highest and most prestigious scientific award of the Netherlands is named the Spinozaprijs Spinoza prize.

Spinoza was included in a 50 theme canon that attempts to summarise the history of the Netherlands. In the Tractatus Spinoza said, in passing, about the Jews that "were it not that the fundamental principles of their religion discourage manliness, I would not hesitate to believe that they will one day, given the opportunity, [ Some scholars agree to various degrees with the characterization of Spinoza as proto-Zionist [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]while other scholars are critical of it.

There has been a renewed debate in modern times about Spinoza's excommunication among Israeli politicians, rabbis and Jewish press, with many calling for the cherem to be reversed. Presenters included Steven NadlerJonathan I. IsraelSteven B. Smith, and Daniel B. However, the rabbi of the congregation ruled that it should hold, on the basis that he had no greater wisdom than his predecessors, and that Spinoza's views had not become less problematic over time.

Spinoza's life and work have been the subject of interest for several writers. For example, this influence was considerably early in German literature, where Goethe makes a glowing mention of the philosopher in his memoirs, highlighting the positive influence of the Ethics in his personal life.

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In the following century, the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges famously wrote two sonnets in his honor "Spinoza" in El otro, el mismo; and "Baruch Spinoza" in La moneda de hierro, and several direct references to Spinoza's philosophy can be found in this writer's work. That is not the only work of fiction where the philosopher appears as the main character.

In the German writer Berthold Auerbach dedicated to him the first novel in his series on Jewish history, translated into English in Spinoza: a Novel. Yalomor O Segredo de Espinosa lit. The main character, Dr. Nahum Fischelson, studies the book religiously, and holds Spinoza in divine esteem. Contents move to sidebar hide.

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Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. For other uses, see Spinoza disambiguation. AmsterdamDutch Republic. The HagueDutch Republic. Talmud Torah University of Leiden no degree [ 11 ]. Western philosophy. Cartesianism [ 1 ] Conceptualism [ 2 ] Correspondence theory of truth [ a ] [ 4 ] Direct realism [ 5 ] Foundationalism according to Hegel [ 6 ] Rationalism Psychological Egoism [ 7 ].

Epistemology ethics Hebrew Bible [ 8 ] metaphysics. Positions: Hasmonean Sadducean Pharisee Boethusian. People: Aristobulus of Alexandria Philo of Alexandria. See also: History of the Jews in Amsterdam. Uriel da Costa's early lapeirousia spinoza biography. School days and the family business. Expulsion from the Jewish community. Education and study group.

Death and rescue of unpublished writings. Main article: Ethics Spinoza book. Substance, attributes, and modes. Main article: Tractatus Politicus. See also: Pantheism controversy. Other philosophical connections. Reconsideration of Spinoza's expulsion. Depictions and influence in literature. His boyhood and early adult business name was "Bento", and his synagogue name was "Baruch", the Hebrew translation of "Bento", which means "blessed".

In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Collins English Dictionary. Retrieved 27 April Zalta, Edward N. Retrieved 20 March The New York Times. Retrieved 8 September World in time of upheaval: Sources of enlightenment. Deseret News. Ethicsin Spinoza: Complete Workstrans. I, Prop. XXXVI, Appendix: "[M]en think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed of them so to wish and desire.

Retrieved 21 February Penguin Books. ISBN Retrieved 11 November Smith regarded as the most dangerous enemy of Christianity, and as he announced his conviction that it had gained the control of the schools, press and pulpit of the Old World [Europe], and was rapidly gaining the same control of the New [United States], his alarm and indignation sometimes rose to the eloquence of genuine passion.

Henry Smith, D. Retrieved 18 March Allanson, "Pantheism: Its Story and Significance", Dictionnaire Historique et Critiquevol. Libraire Desoer, Paris,p. Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge University Press, p. Allen, Max Muller. Kessinger Publishing, Meeting Duquette, David A.